Recommended Web Hosts

Recommended Web Hosts to Help You Get the Most Out of Your Website

Every website is hosted somewhere, and yet most beginning website creators have little or no idea about which hosting companies are good, and which ones are, shall we say, not so good. Hosting is a very competitive business, and as a result it’s difficult to find reliable information on which host is best.
We here at San Antonio Web Design have hosted websites with many different hosting companies, with wildly different experiences. This is by no means a scientific evaluation: it’s a series of case studies based on our experiences, and we pass these onto you. We will recommend hosts based on the type of hosting you’re looking for: shared (budget hosting), VPS, and managed.

Best Shared Host: Godaddy

Godaddy has website hosting as well.

Most people think of Godaddy as a domain registrar, or those dumb superbowl commercials. I was initially reluctant to host a website on Godaddy, but it ended up being the greatest shared hosting experience. Of all our websites, Godaddy had the best uptime for its websites. It’s also awfully convenient to register a domain and host the website all in one place.
Godaddy also has tons of coupon codes (including renewal coupons) to help you save money long term. Many hosts will offer a free domain name registration, but after the first year you will be charged the regular rate, which can add up. With Godaddy you can renew your domain name with at least a 40% discount with the right coupon code.Click here to see Godaddy’s Renewal Coupon Codes.Click here to visit Godaddy.

Shared Hosting Honorable Mention: Fatcow

As good as Godaddy is, it doesn’t have the industry standard cPanel interface, and does not allow you shell access. Fatcow has these things, plus a few more features that make them comparable to Godaddy (maybe even better: it depends on your perspective).
Fatcow is also a carbon neutral website host, so if you’re concerned about your website being green, Fatcow is one of the best options out there. Fatcow also has excellent customer support: the company pledges to have you talking to a live agent within 60 seconds of phoning them. If these features are important to you, then Fatcow far outranked Godaddy in this area.
Fatcow was not as good at website uptime. My external uptime tests had our Godaddy sites running at 99.9% uptime, whereas our Fatcow websites were clocked at 99.1%. The difference between these two numbers may not be much, but for us website uptime was the absolute #1 priority for us, Godaddy is our selection.
Here’s a link to some Fatcow coupon codes: Fatcow’s hosting discounts and promotionsClick here to visit Fatcow

Best VPS Hosting: Myhosting.com

If you have a large website for yourself or your company, you may want to invest in a VPS server. What is a VPS? VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. You’re website still exists on a shared server, but you are partitioned from the other websites. The are a number of benefits to using a VPS: added security, more space for your website, as well as improved performance during high traffic situations. VPS networks generally recognize when a website is having a traffic spike, and are able to use resources from other servers to help with the load (so your website won’t experience any downtime).

Myhosting.com has been in the VPS hosting business for a long time and has an excellent reputation when it comes to hosting websites. They have every kind of VPS you can think of, and they are also budget friendly. Their VPS services are among the lowest out there.

Best Managed Hosting Service: Singlehop

Managed hosting is more expensive but is also the enterprise-level hosting one needs when you host a major website for a company, or a personal website with heavy loads of traffic. Managed hosting is when you have a representative assigned to your website and you can call them at anytime. You can customize your dedicated servers for your website’s needs (if it’s a video streaming site, it will be different than if it’s a text-based website).

Singlehop is a Chicago-based hosting company with data centers here in the U.S. They consistently win customer support awards and are in touch with their customers through social media and special offers.